“Mi piace il mondo moderno e tutto ciò mi affascina. Sono cresciuto in un periodo di rinascimento musicale, un momento fortunato in cui è nat la musica migliore ed anche la più commerciale. Non ci saranno più momenti come quelli ma per me l’unico criterio è la grandezza. È tutto ciò a cui tengo. Quello che sto facendo rincorre la grandezza? Che io raggiunga o meno risultati, questo è il mio criterio al cento per cento”
– Stevie Van Zandt
Wicked Cool/Big Machine/Universal Music Enterprise annunciano il nuovo attesissimo album del leggendario Little Steven, in uscita il 19 maggio 2017. SOULFIRE sarà pubblicato in CD, in digitale e in doppio LP.
SOULFIRE è il primo album di Stevie Van Zandt in due decenni, ed è senza dubbio la sua più pura dichiarazione artistica. La track-list comprende brani che ripercorrono tutta la sua carriera di artista, performer, produttore, arrangiatore e compositore, e torna all’approccio “soul horns-meet-rock‘n roll guitars” dei primi album con Southside Johnny e Asbury Jukes.
“Sono sempre stato tematico nei miei lavori, molto concettuale” dice Van Zandt. “Ho bisogno del contesto, non riesco a fare solo una collezione di canzoni, non funziona per me. In questo caso, il concetto sono “io stesso”. Chi sono io? Sono quasi un “genere” a parte ormai. Per cui ci sono alcune cover, alcune canzoni nuove, e alcune reinterpretazioni di quelle che ritengo le più belle canzoni che ho scritto in questi anni. In quest’album ci sono io che faccio me stesso.”
Little Steven & The Disciples of Soul sono tornati l’ottobre scorso, su richiesta di un amico che li ha invitati a suonare al BluesFest di Londra. Van Zandt arrivava dal tour con la E Street Band e aveva in progetto un viaggio in UK per festeggiare il compleanno della moglie e l’ottantesimo di Bill Wyman. “Una serie di circostanze che si sono incastrate perfettamente” dice Van Zandt.
Little Steven ha velocemente riunito i Disciples of Soul del 21° secolo, quello che definisce benevolmente “un gruppo di disadattati, ladri e portuali”, ha aggiunto tre coriste ed una sezione fiati tra cui Stan Harrison e Eddie Manion, già membri degli degli Asbury Jukes/Miami Horns.
Stevie e la sua band hanno attraversato l’Atlantico per quella che avrebbe dovuto essere una “one-night-only performance” impreziosita da classici come “I Don’t Want To Go Home”, altre canzoni della sua carriera solista, brani scritti per altri e cover di Etta James, James Brown ed Electric Flag.
“A quel punto ho pensato beh, abbiamo già imparato 22 canzoni… Potremmo fare un album!”
SOULFIRE è stato arrangiato e prodotto da Van Zandt nel suo studio di New York, coprodotto da Geoff Sanoff (Fountains of Wayne, Stephen Colbert) e dal chitarrista Marc Ribler. I cori in “I Don’t Want To Go Home” e “The City Weeps Tonight” sono dei Persuasions, il celebre gruppo acappella. Il missaggio è stato affidato al celebre Bob Clearmountain (Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Who, Bryan Adams) mentre il mastering è opera di Bob Ludwig (Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, The Band, Sly and the Family Stone).
“Non mi sono mai divertito così tanto nel registrare un album. L’abbiamo fatto velocemente, con addosso l’energia dello show di Londra. Quell’energia l’abbiamo portata in studio ed è uscito tutto fuori di petto, in sei settimane abbiamo inciso e mixato. È stato tutto molto istintivo ed energico”.
I cinque album solistici di Van Zandt hanno visto esprimere il suo songwriting in modo del tutto personale attraverso una varietà di suoni e di approcci, con l’ambizione che ha alimentato gran parte della sua produzione creativa in questi ultimi due decenni. Nel frattempo Little Steven ha allargato i suoi orizzonti, recitando nei Sopranos e in Lilyhammer – di cui ha scritto anche la colonna sonora – e con il suo programma radio “Little Steven’s Underground Garage”
“Mi sento un po’ in colpa per essere stato lontano da Little Steven, l’artista” dice. “l’ho lasciato da parte ed ora voglio rimediare”.
“Voglio portare la band in ogni posto dove vogliano vederci. È difficile con 15 elementi, ma sto cercando di realizzare il mio sogno!”
SOULFIRE segna il necessario ritorno di un vero grande artista, rivitalizzato e inarrestabile.
“I’m back into it,” dice Little Steven. “And this time I’m going to stay back.”
Van Zandt – che rimane comunque un membro della E Street Band – sarà in tour in Europa con i Disciples of Soul dal 9 Giugno all’8 Luglio, unica data italiana a Pistoia il 4 Luglio.
Ecco le date confermate del tour europeo che è un’esclusiva Barley Arts Promotion:
LITTLE STEVEN & THE DISCIPLES OF SOUL
Ven 9 Giugno 2017 – SWE – SOLVESBORG – Sweden Rock Festival
Mer 14 Giugno 2017 – DE – LEIPZIG – Parkbuhne
Ven 16 Giugno 2017 – DE – FRANCOFORTE – Batschkapp
Dom 18 Giugno 2017 – UK – MANCHESTER – Manchester Arena
Gio 22 Giugno 2017 – IRL – DUBLINO – Vicar Street
Dom 25 Giugno 2017 – NL – AMSTERDAM – Carré
Sab 1° Luglio 2017 – FL – JÄRVENPÄÄ – Puisto Blues Festival
Mar 4 Luglio 2017 – IT – PISTOIA – Pistoia Blues ℅ Piazza Duomo
Mer 5 Luglio 2017 – SLO – LJUBLJANA – Teatro Krizanke
Sab 8 Luglio 2017 – ES – BARCELLONA – Cruïlla Festival
Sab 5 Agosto 2017 – N – NOTODDEN – Notodden Blues Festival
TRACK BY TRACK BY LITTLE STEVEN:
- “Soulfire” (co-written with Anders Bruus of The Breakers) “Doing the radio show keeps you very much in tune with what’s going on in the world of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s not the real world, we live in a completely parallel universe, but we’ve broadcast over 700 new bands in the past 14 years. A lot of them we signed to my Wicked Cool label, like The Breakers, who are a very good band from Denmark. This was a way of exercising my songwriting muscles at that time. I try to live with purpose, and that includes songwriting. I don’t get up every day and write a song just to write a song, I have to have a specific reason for it. So if I’m producing a band and I feel they need a little something extra or something specific, I’ll write it for them, or in this case, with them. To some extent, that’s what kept my songwriting alive over these past years.”
- “I’m Coming Back” (Originally found on Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes’ 1991 LP, BETTER DAYS) “I did their first three albums in 1976, 1977, and 1978 but then we didn’t work together for another 15 years. The lyrics were perfect for Southside at that point and they work for me, at this point. It’s one of my favorite lyrics that I’ve ever written.”
- “The Blues Is My Business” (Written by Kevin Bowe and Todd Cerney, recorded by Etta James in 2003) “I’ve never recorded a real urban Southside-of-Chicago blues thing before. I went though a blues period growing up but by the time I got to the recording studio, I’d kind of gone in a different direction. We worked it out for BluesFest and I liked the arrangement so much, we recorded it for the album.”
- “I Saw The Light” “I had half-written it for Richie Sambora & Orianthi but the next time I talked to him he had already written 40 songs so I didn’t bother finishing it. I came across it as we were making my album and thought, I like this, maybe I’ll finish it for me.”
- “Some Things Just Don’t Change” (Originally found on Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes’ 1977 LP, THIS TIME IT’S FOR REAL) “One of my favorites. I wrote it with David Ruffin and The Temptations in mind. I was basically trying to write a classic Motown song. It can be an interesting artistic challenge writing for other people. As third generation rock ‘n’ rollers we grew up post-show business. It was art form by then, very autobiographical. That’s one of the reasons for its success as an art form, people relate to rock ‘n’ roll in a personal way. So part of you wants to write something traditional, something classic, but part of you always wants to keep it very personal.”
- “Love On The Wrong Side of Town” (Co-written with Bruce Springsteen and originally found on Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes’ 1977 LP, THIS TIME IT’S FOR REAL) “Bruce had the riff and I did the rest. When you wrote, arranged, and produced the original versions, it’s not always easy to redo them. They become definitive. You did it that first way for a reason. I found it difficult to do much with this one but when we got to the end of the song I found an opportunity to change it up a little bit. I changed little things here and there on all the songs on the album but it definitely took a minute.”
- “The City Weeps Tonight” – “It was going to be the first song on my first solo album. I was going to do a chronological history of rock ‘n’ roll with my own records but the concept changed and I got political. It remained three-quarters finished all these years, but I always liked it. I love doo-wop so this was a great way to get that onto the record.”
- “Down and Out in New York City” (Written by Bodie Chandler and Barry De Vorzon and originally recorded on James Brown’s 1973 Black Caesar soundtrack) “I love the blaxploitation genre – we do a special on the radio show every year, the day after Thanksgiving, we call it ‘Blaxploitation Friday.’ My favorite has always been James Brown’s theme from Black Caesar. It has the immediate common ground for me of being about New York City. We did it for BluesFest, came up with a really cool groove and a new horn line and made it our own. It has a bit of a jazzy element, which I explored with my Lilyhammer score, but like the blues song, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever recorded before on a solo album so it was nice to get those genres onto a record.”
- “Standing in the Line of Fire” (Co-written with Gary U.S. Bonds and (L.) Anderson and originally found on Gary U.S. Bonds’ 1984 STANDING IN THE LINE OF FIRE) “Gary U.S. Bonds is somebody you don’t want to mess with. The records I did with him are so damn good, I thought, I can’t really beat this, I need to really change it somehow. So I added a piece of music I did for Lilyhammer – now it’s like Gary U.S. Bonds-meets-Ennio Morricone.”
- “Saint Valentine’s Day” (Originally found on The Cocktail Slippers’ 2009 LP, SAINT VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE) “I wrote it for Nancy Sinatra but unfortunately never did the session. I recorded it with The Cocktail Slippers, similar to the way I was going to do it with Nancy, and then David Chase liked it so we did a more rock ‘n’ rolly guys’ version of it for his movie, Not Fade Away. For my version, I added a horn line that I think changes the whole complexion of the song, makes it more of a soul thing.”
- I Don’t Want To Go Home” (Originally found on Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes’ 1976 debut LP, I DON’T WANT TO GO HOME) “It’s the first song I ever wrote and I wanted to do it the way I’d originally imagined it. I’d spent five or six years trying to write songs but I was never really happy with them. I decided to go back and really study the roots of rock ‘n’ roll. To me, the beginning of rock ‘n’ roll songwriting was Leiber & Stoller, so I decided I’d write a Drifters song. I was on the oldies circuit at the time, playing with The Dovells, and I got to meet all of my fifties and sixties early rock ‘n’ roll heroes, spend some time with them. I wrote it for Ben E. King but then didn’t have the courage to give it to him.”
- “Ride The Night Away” (Co-written with Steve Jordan and originally found on Jimmy Barnes’ 1985 LP, FOR THE WORKING CLASS MAN; later recorded for Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes’ 1991 LP, BETTER DAYS) “Steve Jordan came over to my house one day and said, ‘I’ve got a Jimmy Barnes session, I promised him a song and I don’t have one so I’m not leaving until we write one.’ That kind of songwriting-on-a-deadline goes back to Leiber & Stoller as well – I love that whole Brill Building thing, I wish I’d been around for that period.”
